Your skull in gold will be more valuable than others, being solid all through. - Tim Powers

Trusting Merlin is like giving a migrant scorpion a lift inside your hat.

Lepidopt didn’t know if he was one of those pipe smokers who always had the thing in his mouth and talked around the stem, or one of the ones who was always fiddling with it in his hands, tamping it and relighting it and shoving a pipe cleaner down it; they were different sorts of men.

God help us," said Crawford softly.
"If there is one." Byron grinned. "A whole lot of ghastly things have turned out to be possible, remember.